Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia on Tuesday (3 February) of exploiting a U.S.-backed energy ceasefire to stockpile weapons and launch large-scale drone and missile attacks on Ukraine ahead of peace talks.
Zelenskyy said Ukraine was waiting for U.S. reaction to Russia's overnight attack that damaged Ukraine's energy infrastructure, as Washington had prompted a short-lived ceasefire in attacks on energy targets.
U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters Russian President Vladimir Putin had made an agreement that expired on Sunday (1 February).
"It was Sunday to Sunday, and it opened up and he hit them hard last night," he said at the White House. "He kept his word on that ... we'll take anything, because it's really, really cold over there. But it was on Sunday, and he went from Sunday to Sunday."
Asked if he was disappointed, Trump replied, "I want him to end the war."
The attack knocked out heating in cities, including the capital Kyiv, during freezing temperatures, even as Ukrainian negotiators headed to Abu Dhabi for a second round of U.S.-brokered trilateral talks set for 4-5 February.
"It was a deliberate attack against energy infrastructure, involving a record number of ballistic missiles," Zelenskyy wrote on X.
Pressure on Ukraine
Ukraine is under U.S. pressure to agree to a peace deal while attacks by Russia on its energy system appear intended to freeze Ukrainians into submission.
The first round of trilateral talks in late January brought no movement on territorial issues, with Moscow demanding Kyiv cede more land in eastern Ukraine, which it refuses to do.
Speaking to reporters in Kyiv at a press conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, he said Ukraine would approach Washington to discuss new consequences for Russia.
In his nightly video address, Zelenskyy said, "We expect a response from the United States to the Russian strikes. It was America's proposal to stop strikes on energy infrastructure during diplomatic efforts and the cold winter period."
Ukrainian officials said Russia launched 450 drones and more than 70 missiles in strikes that wounded at least 12 people and struck apartment blocks and energy infrastructure as temperatures hovered around minus 20 Celsius (minus 4 Fahrenheit).
An early evening strike on Tuesday (3 February) in the southeastern city of Zaporizhzhia killed two 18-year-olds and injured nine people.
Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Kuleba said 1,142 apartment buildings in Kyiv remained without heating and officials in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, said 270,000 residents were in unheated apartments.
"The goal is obvious: to cause maximum destruction and leave the city without heat in severe cold," Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov wrote on Telegram, adding that a thermal plant in the city had been badly damaged.
Much of Ukraine has been gripped by a new wave of cold after what experts said was the coldest January in six years. Families languish in frigid and darkened apartments during power outages and cuts to heating that last hours and days.
Kyiv resident Natalia Hlobenko, 35, described how she rushed to cover her 11-year-old son just on Tuesday before an explosion sprayed her apartment with broken glass.
"Where is this ceasefire?" said a teary Hlobenko, bundled in her windowless apartment. "Honestly, how much can we take?"
Zelenskyy has previously said Ukraine, which is struggling to stop grinding Russian battlefield advances, was ready for "substantive" talks. Moscow and Kyiv blame each other for the failure to agree a peace deal.
Territory remains the main sticking point, with Ukraine resisting Russia's demands that it cede the remaining 20% of the eastern region of Donetsk that Moscow has been unable to conquer since its 2022 invasion.
Ukraine's lead negotiator said Ukrainian officials would first hold bilateral talks with U.S. officials in Abu Dhabi to discuss U.S. security guarantees for any peace deal and a post-war reconstruction package, and later hold a trilateral meeting involving Russian negotiators.
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At least 30 people died and hundreds were displaced in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state on Tuesday (24 February) after relentless, record-breaking rainfall triggered landslides and flash floods.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is heading to Beijing on for his first official visit as chancellor, aiming to strengthen political and economic dialogue with China before tackling pressing international crises.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has suggested that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán should block financial support to Russia rather than Ukraine, as Budapest opposes the European Union’s 20th sanctions package against Moscow.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, has called for an immediate, full and unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine, describing the conflict as “a stain on our collective conscience”.
Further Iran-U.S. nuclear talks are scheduled in Geneva on Thursday (26 February) as diplomacy resumes over Tehran’s nuclear programme following earlier mediation efforts. But will the talks move Iran-U.S. negotiations closer to a deal, and what should be expected from the meeting?
Iran has signed a secret €500 million arms deal with Russia to rebuild air defences, weakened during last year’s war with Israel, the Financial Times has reported. The agreement, signed in December in Moscow, will see Russia deliver 500 Verba launch units and 2,500 9M336 missiles over three years.
A British national was among at least 19 people killed when a passenger bus plunged off a mountain highway into the Trishuli river in Nepal before dawn on Monday (23 February), authorities said. A New Zealander and a Chinese national were among those injured.
Seven people were killed after gunmen ambushed a police patrol in Kohat, a district in Pakistan’s north-west near the Afghan border, on Tuesday, in an attack that comes amid rising militant violence and heightened tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Four years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, the war is no longer defined by shock but by scale.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is heading to Beijing on for his first official visit as chancellor, aiming to strengthen political and economic dialogue with China before tackling pressing international crises.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has suggested that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán should block financial support to Russia rather than Ukraine, as Budapest opposes the European Union’s 20th sanctions package against Moscow.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations, António Guterres, has called for an immediate, full and unconditional ceasefire in Ukraine, describing the conflict as “a stain on our collective conscience”.
Newcastle United secured a 3–2 victory over Qarabağ FK in the return leg of the UEFA Champions League play-offs at St James’ Park.
Laurence des Cars, director of the Louvre Museum, has resigned months after a $102 million daylight heist at the museum, which prompted a parliamentary inquiry.
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